


Cocoa and Kisses at Sir Alec Myerson's Flat

by Crowgirl, elizajane



Series: What Happened After (Two Men Walked Into a Bar) [4]
Category: Downton Abbey, Foyle's War
Genre: Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-13 23:01:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7141652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl, https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Our gentleman friends find themselves some privacy, some cocoa, and a dash of courage.</p><p>Act four of our self-indulgent comment fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cocoa and Kisses at Sir Alec Myerson's Flat

**Author's Note:**

> Darlings, we don't even know. But are having such a delightful time doing it!

Alec's flat turns out to be the third floor of an old Victorian townhouse, set well back from the road on a small side-street between Lowndes Square and Belgrave Square Garden. The walk from the Knightsbridge tube station is short, pleasant in the slightly chill September darkness that here smells more strongly of gardens and dying leaves than of exhaust and damp asphalt.

Myerson walks without speaking, slightly ahead of him on the pavement, his step brisk and confident, and Grantham trails behind, feeling vaguely as if he should simply allow himself to be lost in the maze of small streets and make this poor man's life easier by crashing out of it as nonsensically as he had crashed in. What right did he have, after all, to plunge into Alec's office one day, demanding his old driver who he hasn't seen in nearly fifteen years be released from jail--

'You think very loudly,' Alec comments as he turns up a wide, shallow flight of stairs, fumbling in his pocket for a set of keys.

'Hm? What?'

Alec unlocks the front door and steps into the warmly lit entryway, holding the door open for Robert, and then locking it behind him. 'It's interesting,' he continues, pushing open the solid wooden inner door and guiding Grantham up a flight of carpeted stairs, 'I'm used to being the one thinking the hardest in any given room. Of course, in a room in Whitehall, that's not a difficult distinction to achieve.'

Robert manages a ghost of a laugh. 'No, I should imagine not.'

They climb the rest of the stairs in silence, Alec's breathing becoming slightly heavier behind him as they top the last flight.

'Just here -- on your right.'

Robert stops by the door. There are no other doors on the landing and, judging from the arrangement of post boxes in the entryway, this is a house with very few occupants. Unless someone has incredibly keen hearing and a nasty habit of eavesdropping, he should be safe to speak here. 'Alec, I really...I feel I really must apologize, I allowed myself an unpardonable--'

Alec is clearly focused on unlocking his front door and Robert is not at all sure he's being listened to and doesn't have the courage to continue. He lets his words fall into silence and hunches his shoulders under his greatcoat. Alec pushes the door open, reaches inside to flick on a switch, and turns back to him, dropping his keys back into his pocket.

'Unpardonable? I shouldn't have thought so. I've seen unpardonable. That was not it. After you.'

Robert steps past Alec into the flat. It's spacious, for London, and tidily kept. Myerson's housekeeper must be a real stickler about dust. She could teach the new girls at Downton a thing or to. The servant problem, Grantham thinks, is always with us. But, thankfully, no longer his problem to solve.

'You should know I don't ... make a habit of this,' he says, as Alec takes his greatcoat and scarf and hangs them in the hall closet before removing his own.

'I didn't imagine you did,' Alec says, turning back and reaching up to loosen his tie. 'If nothing else, you lack the subtlety of a man regularly on the pull.'

'I'm--’ Robert opened his mouth to apologize, again, but realized he wasn't, in fact, sorry. And it appeared possible that Myerson's wasn't either so he shut his mouth again.

According to Myerson he thought very loudly. Perhaps if he stopped speaking Alec will be able to explain what the tangle of thoughts in his head amount to.

'I don't either, for what that's worth,' Alec continues, dropping his hands from necktie to cufflinks. 'Make a habit of this. But I seem to have developed something of an interest in doing it with you.'

Robert blinks -- then blinks again as Myerson undoes his cufflinks and drops them and the remains of his black tie in a heap on the hall table. The first question that springs to mind is _Doing...what, exactly?_ and it isn't that he's not interested in the range of possible answers to that question but up until about a minute ago, he'd been expecting to be rated out, not confirmed in what he'd started out the evening hoping for. 'I...Oh.'

'Now.' Myerson runs a hand back over his hair and looks at Robert. For the first time, Robert notices there are spots of color high on Alec's cheekbones; his eyes are steady but intent, watchful; and his shoulders are set as if someone had called him to attention. 'You can either refuse to countenance everything I've just said which means I've made a major misjudgment of character which would leave me extremely unhappy with myself. Or,' he waves towards the rest of the room which Robert hadn't even bothered to glance at, 'you can give me your coat and we can sit down, rejoice in the fact that my door locks are sound, and consider our options.'

'You make it sound rather like a treaty negotiation,' Robert says, aiming for dry humor that comes out rather tinny in his own ears.

Alec snorts, a rueful sound Robert thinks. 'I have, haven't I? Chalk it up to lack of experience. As I say, I've been -- approached. Before. You aren't the first who's correctly read the signs. But the offers have never been to my liking, before now.'

'And mine is.' Robert states the obvious, though he still wishes they could stop talking in circumlocutions and actually --

Alec takes half a step forward, then stops himself, squinting up over Robert’s shoulder as if the words he's looking for will appear in the corner of the sitting room above the fireplace.

Robert thinks back to the theatre, to the reckless kiss that he'd impulsively pressed to the back of Alec's hand. He'd thought, through the rest of act five, that his instincts had misled him -- but instead it appears they've brought him here. Which is closer to what he wants than he'd been an hour ago. So perhaps those instincts weren't half so shoddy as he feared.

'You're the one thinking loudly now,' he says, softly, taking two steps forward to close the distance between them and reaching out gently to rest two fingers against Myerson's jawline, draw his attention back to Robert.

The color on Alec's cheeks is definitely not a trick of light and shadow.

'Am I?' Alec asks, faintly. 'I feel quite the opposite -- that the usual clamor of thought inside my own head has abandoned me entirely. The entire walk from the tube station I've been thinking to myself what I might possibly propose once we arrived and... I find I haven't the first idea.'

'I have some experience in this area,' Robert offers, smiling.

'A young Welshman?'

Robert laughs. 'Ha! You imagine a much more adventurous married life for me than, in fact, has been the case. Young Dai is Cora's lover, not mine.'

'A shame?' Myerson offers it as a question.

'Hardly. The lad's younger than Sybil. I couldn't ... all I can think every time I see him is that, despite the war, he still looks undercooked!'

That draws out a smile that reaches Alec's eyes. 'Ah, well then,' Alec says. 'That's one objection you can hardly have in my case.'

'I don't believe I have a single objection in your case,' Robert says, leaning slightly forward.

'Not a single one?' Alec asks, not pulling away.

' _Mmm_. No, not a one,' Robert murmurs, closing the distance between Alec's mouth and his.

oOo

Alec thinks later -- much later -- that enough years have passed for him to be able to claim this as a first kiss. From what he remembers, it's almost certainly better than the actual one. He can feel Robert's fingers on the angle of his jaw, a gentle suggestion that he tilt his head very slightly--

'Christ, man...' He pulls back far enough to lick his lips, tasting the faint combination of lemon, sugar, red wine, and something else slightly -- well, he doesn't know what it is, really, but he would very much like to find out.

'You have an objection?'

'Not the smallest.' Alec slides his hand around the side of Robert's throat, feeling the pulse hammering just under the fine skin. He presses their lips together again -- less a kiss than a momentary caress -- and pulls back, his mouth still close enough to Robert's for their lips to brush when he speaks. 'Do I seem as if I do?'

'No--' Robert clears his throat and Alec can feel the quick dart of his tongue as he licks his lips. '--No, not at all.'

'Good. I would be terribly disappointed if you misunderstood my position.'

They continue on in this fashion for quite some time. Alec loses track of how many times their lips come together in exchange. He allows himself to sink into the sensation of Robert's tongue tracing along his own lower lip, pressing in, the small, needy hitching sound at the back of Grantham's throat when Alec -- daring -- catches Robert's lip lightly between his teeth and sucks. It's a sound he feels as much as hears, due to the intimacy between them.

And still, he finds himself wanting more.

Robert must feel the same because his hands are smoothing up Alec's chest, now, fumbling at the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons on Alec's best waistcoat. Alec leans into the touch with an embarrassingly needy whine just as Grantham gives a huffing laugh against Alec's lips and pulls away '--damn buttons! Impossible to undo on another man's clothes --'

Alec reaches between them to help. He can't find the buttons, though, and ends up simply catching Robert's hands, holding them palm to palm between his own. He can hear Robert's breathing slow, feels the movement to step back that Robert catches before he gets very far.

'I'm -- sorry if I--' Robert wiggles his fingers against Alec's palms and then laughs. 'Well. I suppose if you actually objected you wouldn't still be holding my hands.'

'Perhaps I should recruit you.'

'Hm?'

'You learn quickly.' Alec, made bold by dim light and the security of his own walls around them, drops a kiss on Robert's fingertips; hearing the catch in his breath, he repeats the movement.

Robert's skin tastes of metal and damp wool and Alec can't explain why this suddenly seems like an intensely attractive flavor except that he realises after a few moments that he's been kissing his way over Robert's knuckles, repeating the gesture Robert had tried in the theatre on the back of both hands.

When he looks up, it's to find Robert watching him with a queerly vulnerable -- Alec would almost have said 'shy' -- expression on his face.

'Yes, well,' he says awkwardly when he sees Alec notice. 'So do you.'

'You like this, then?' Alec asks, in the spirit of discovery, turning one of Robert's hands in his so the wrist is exposed, brushing his lips across Robert's pulse point.

'I do, rather.' Robert sounds almost pained.

Alec traces the same path with his thumb, watching Robert's face. 'This?'

' _God_ ,' Grantham looks down at their entangled hands. 'I thought-- I don't know what I thought but it wasn't--'

'Your previous experience notwithstanding?'

Grantham shivers. 'I've always been led to believe that it's ... different. With a man. I wasn't sure I would -- and yet at my age there's not a great deal lost in trying, is there?'

Alec feels his lips curl in amusement: 'Was that your mother's advice?'

Robert laughs, startled, 'Ha! I'll thank you to leave my mother out of this -- but no. I mean, yes. But my mother was never the cautious one in the family. She let my father contain her -- when it suited. She never needed age as an excuse.'

Alec arches a brow. 'So the stories are true.'

'Some of them.'

'I look forward to hearing which,' Alec says.

'I'm not sure they are all mine to tell,' Robert says, 'and I cannot help but feel we are straying from our original topic of...conversation, which I would very much like to pursue at greater length?' He lifts their clasped hands, shaking them slightly as if Alec may have forgotten.

'So what shall we talk about, Lord Crawley?' Alec lets their hands drop to waist-level, keeping the pad of his thumb pressed against the soft hollow of Robert's wrist. 'Previous experience, perhaps?'

Robert glances around. 'Do you think we could move out of the hall?'

A few minutes later and there are lights on in the sitting room, a small fire in the grate, and Alec feels the moment has been well and truly stretched too far. Robert is sitting on a wide, well-cushioned ottoman, leaning back against the arm of the settee, looking thoughtfully at the fire as it sparks into fuller life. He hasn't said a word since Alec let go of his hand to find the light switch.

Alec clears his throat. 'Would you like something to drink?'

Robert looks up at him. 'You were the one who said you didn't need to be tipsy.'

Alec coughs. 'Yes, well -- I was thinking of cocoa. As schoolboy as it may sound, I'm rather fond of the stuff.'

In the time it takes the milk to warm, Alec forces himself to take a series of deep breaths, focusing intently on the absolute normality of the actions required to make hot chocolate: milk from the icebox, powdered chocolate from the pantry, a sprinkle of sugar, regular stirring, warming the cups at the side of the range. These are all entirely rational, comprehensible actions.

That not ten minutes ago he had been standing in his own darkened front hallway learning the textures of Robert Crawley's hands with his lips--

He shakes his head firmly and makes himself concentrate.

Robert stretches to take his cup without standing. He's discarded his coat and waistcoat, both lying over the arm of the settee behind him, and his cuffs are loose about his wrists.

Alec sits on the settee, near enough to touch Robert's shoulder.

Robert takes a sip of the cocoa and hums appreciatively. 'Excellent.'

'Thank you. My mother taught me to make it many years ago.'

Robert laughs. 'I can't picture my mother teaching anyone to cook. Perhaps how to dress down a cook...' The sentence trails away and he clears his throat. 'I was considering -- what might constitute previous experience.'

And just like that Alec's fingertips are tingling again and he has the distinct feeling that his shirt is far too tight. 'Yes?' He puts his cup down on the low table in front of them and begins undoing his own waistcoat buttons.

Robert continues thoughtfully, his gaze fixed on the fire. 'I imagine we both know what schoolboys are liable to get up to.'

Alec makes a noncommittal noise that he's happy to note Robert takes for agreement. He'd really rather not be sidetracked on his academic record at this point.

'And I was trying to decide...' Robert's voice drifts into silence again and he rests his cup against his lower lip without actually drinking.

'To decide what?' Alec shrugs out of his jacket and lays it over Robert's.

'I had a friend. At university.'

'Were your friendships easy or hard-won?' Alec asks, out of genuine curiosity. He tries to picture a much younger Grantham gadding about Oxford and finds it difficult to pin down in his own mind what sort of youth Robert would have been. His presence now is so particular to having worn and now half-discarded the cares of his particular position.

'Mm.' Robert seems to consider the question in earnest for a moment, sipping at his chocolate. 'I was the student who had a great many acquaintances but very few friends -- does that make sense?'

'Would it offend you if I said I knew a great many of your kind -- from a distance -- while at university myself?' Alec had been a quiet, bookish student -- and when he wasn't reading he was observing the habits of his peers, seeking to unlock the secrets they traded amongst themselves so effortlessly. The secrets of access and expectations, futures that always looked secure and influential.

Robert shakes his head, 'Not at all -- I knew a great many of 'my kind' as well. Oxbridge positively teems with us. But the friend in question was not one of those -- not one of us. He was the son of missionary parents, sent back to school from a childhood spent in Kenya, supported by the church with the expectation that he become a clergyman at the end of it. We struck up a friendship due to our mutual interest in long walks in the countryside. We'd set out on a Friday morning and not return until Tuesday next, having walked to Gloucester or Bristol or up to Stratford-upon-Avon and caught the train back. In our third year we purchased bicycles and ranged even further.'

'You enjoyed his company?'

'More than "enjoyed" -- I enjoyed the company of many fellow students, you understand. But Dirk was ... singular. He was the only one whose company I never tired of, from whom I was always reluctant to part no matter how long we spent together. And there were moments when I found myself wondering --' Robert pauses. 'And then there was that night in Ilfracombe.'

Alec laughs before he can help it and Robert twists around to raise an eyebrow at him. 'I'm so sorry -- I got stranded there once during the war. It was supposed to be a brief stop on my way to London and the trains stopped. It was the wettest weekend I think I've ever spent anywhere.'

'Ah, yes. It really is -- was -- a lovely little town.'

'I'm sure it is. But not in the middle of a gale.'

'No, probably not.' Robert turns back to the fire. In turning about, he's shifted his position, and the ottoman itself, closer to Alec's knees. Alec hesitates for a minute then eases himself along the cushion so his left knee is brushing Robert's shoulder.

Robert leans back for a moment, letting his weight rest against Alec's legs, and shakes his head. 'It really...wasn't much of anything. We wound up in Ilfracombe at the end of a bicycle tour and decided to spend the night before going back to university.'

'You shared a room, I imagine,' Alec prompts after a moment when Robert seems inclined to sit and stare at the fire rather than say anything.

Robert nods slowly. 'We did. It took me quite awhile to realise -- once we got back to uni -- what the boys were ragging us about when they kept asking if there had only been one bed left at the inn. There wasn't -- we had a perfectly usual room and slept each in his own bed, but--' He stops and makes a quiet huffing noise.

Alec waits, takes a sip of his cocoa, lets himself relax against the settee. His back had been protesting the theatre seat since at least the third act and he takes a small cushion and pushes it behind his lower back, propping himself just a little bit forward.

'--I wished we hadn't,' Robert concludes finally, very quietly.

Alec waits again, but Robert seems disinclined to continue. Or perhaps that is the end of the story.

Well, he supposes, tit for tat. He had started this conversation, after all. And it's hardly kind -- though when had he begun thinking of himself as someone who offered kindnesses? particularly to members of the aristocracy? -- to ask Robert to share and keep his own (deeply dull yet likely still enough for the determined scandal-monger) past misadventures to himself.

'I once shared a room with a ... friend,' he begins. Because he hasn't allowed himself to think of Ian Williams in many years. 'On leave in Cairo, after the war. The first war.'

'Did you,' Robert asks, turning once again on his ottoman so that Alec could see his face in profile, his face warm and thoughtfully attentive in the glow from the hearth.

'I did. We'd ... grown up together. And enlisted toward the end of '17 -- lied about our age, both of us, not that anyone cared at that point. And somehow, miraculously, both survived the war. So there we were in Cairo during the peace conference waiting to find out whether we'd be mustered to Palestine or shipped off home, with nothing much to do from day-to-day except explore the city laid out before us. So we explored. Recklessly.' Alec find himself smiling, a feeling of genuine happiness bubbling up at the memory.

'We'd been ... intimate, you understand, like men often are in times of war. When you're facing death at any moment, living in close quarters, the polite boundaries between one body and the next seem to ... matter less.' He pauses. 'Or, perhaps, you find yourself wishing more desperately to erase them?' He shakes his head. 'In any event. We were ... I would venture to say we loved one another. And when you have slept huddled under the same blanket for warmth in a tent in the desert, sharing a bed in a rooming house in a foreign city hardly seems daring. And when you've touched one another, in that way, unwashed and gritty and cold and hungry ... well, then, fumbling beneath clean sheets with full bellies is truly a transporting experience.'

He thinks of those clean sheets every time his housekeeper comes by to change out the linen and he slides, with a sigh, beneath crisp, cool bedclothes.

'What happened?' Robert asks, after a pause.

Alec shrugs. 'My father's health was beginning to fail and so he arranged for me to be sent home, to school, rather than to Palestine. Ian made a career of it. A desk job in Ceylon the last I checked. Unlike me, he did acquire a wife, and children. They lost their two sons in the Pacific.'

'You keep track of him.' It isn't a question.

'I won't deny it. But he doesn't know that. And never will. It is not an ... active passion,' Alec sighs. 'Merely a sense of responsibility for a once-dear friend.'

The room is silent for a few minutes, bar the crackle of the fire which is now burning steadily. Then Robert laughs. 'Is this how people feel at the end of a job interview?'

Alec laughs, too. 'I normally try to be a little more intimidating. But generally anyone who gets in to see me can look Hilda straight in the eye, so I don't worry about it very much.'

'For the record, I don't find you very intimidating.' Robert stretches back over his own shoulder and pats Alec's knee; the gesture, simple as it is, feels like the completion of a circuit. Alec stiffens slightly and Robert doesn't remove his hand, instead twisting around so his elbow is on the settee.

'I wouldn't expect you to at this point.' Alec tries to make it sound light but Robert's steady eyes aren't helping with that. He'd taken note at some point during their first meeting of the man's appearance but he hadn't given it any particular thought. He never does -- he dockets people in his mind so he can remember them when he sees them again, identify them by voice or photograph if necessary, not so he can contemplate whether or not he finds them attractive.

'Do I have chocolate on my nose?' Robert asks quietly.

'No. I was just thinking how long it had been since I thought--' Alec stops, feeling himself flush.

'Oh, now, you can't stop there and then turn that color. That's far too intriguing.' Robert turns fully towards him, putting his cup down on the low table and interlacing his fingers over Alec's knee.

'I was wondering how long it had actually been since -- I thought that someone was attractive.' Alec can feel the burn on his cheeks and he's fully aware of how ridiculous he must look. It almost makes him a little angry: Crawley, equally rumpled, presumably in as unfamiliar territory as Alec is, looks at his ease, unflurried by any of this. And, of course, Alec has to sit there blushing like a schoolboy being brought to the headmaster's office.

Robert flushes slightly, but his eyes remain steady. 'I assume you don't mean Richard Burton.'

'I do not.'

Robert leans forward and up, pressing their lips together again and Alec wishes he had thought to put down his cup.

oOo

His gamble -- and Robert would be the first to admit it had been a high-stakes one -- has paid out more, and more rapidly, than he had ever expected. He admits to himself, as he slides a hand behind Alec's neck and pulls him down into a kiss, that some part of him had woken up this morning hoping that the day could lead to something approximating this scenario. But the reality is so much better than his vague imaginings.

The reality is noticing how warm, and slightly damp, the back of Alec's neck is where his collar has been resting, and how the damp is making the thinning hair at the nape of his neck curl slightly. How Robert can shape his fingers to the base of Alec's skull and use his thumb to tilt Alec's head so their lips fit together more seamlessly. He can smell the stale air of the tube and the rumpled sweat of the day lingering on Alec's skin but rather than off-putting it reminds him that this isn't a fantasy because no one remembers to put the scent of stale cigars and smell of piss that hangs about tube station tunnels into one's sexual fantasies. At least, Robert never has.

Fantasies also don't account for the almost-sloshing of cocoa on an expensive India cotton shirt -- he reaches between them, without pulling away from Myerson's lips, to extract the cup that Alec is still gripping in both hands. 'Here --' he whispers, '-- wouldn't want to ruin a perfectly good shirt.'

'No,' Alec sounds slightly dazed, Robert notes with satisfaction. He and Cora may have drifted apart over the last decade -- Dai being the final nail in the proverbial coffin -- but it seems he hasn't lost his touch after all. He's always enjoyed this part of making love, the intricate dance of closer, and closer, fewer clothes and more skin. Though before they proceed much further --

'I'd very much like to remove this suit, actually,' he says, against Alec's cheek, holding the cup of cocoa awkwardly away from them both. 'Perhaps ... I presume you have a bedroom?'

**Author's Note:**

> We'll be writing act five outside of comments to avoid geometrical confusion from posting on the fly ;-)
> 
> Spoiler: There will be sexing. *kof* *ahem*


End file.
